But Saracens have always been able to defend. What has moved their game to a new level this season has been their attacking game. They score tries now.

Last season in the Heineken Cup, they scored just 15 in their pool. This season they scored 29, 10 more than anyone else, a considerable gap even allowing for the presence of Connacht and Zebre in their pool.

Last season in the Aviva Premiership regular season they finished top of the league despite scoring just 41 tries, with six other teams scoring more.

This year they were top again, but scored 68 tries. Only Northampton, with 72, scored more.

You ask the club’s director of rugby, Mark McCall, about the single biggest difference in his side’s modus operandi since losing 24-12 to Toulon in a tryless Heineken Cup semi-final last year, and he will talk about the players and management staff not being “quite as in sync with each other as we could have been”.

But he knows a real transformation has taken place.

“Our biggest gain has been in our attack,” he admits. “We’ve scored three times as many tries as we had this time last year.

"But we have made sure that our foundations have stayed intact. Our defence has not been diluted because of our emphasis on attack.

"Our set piece and kicking game are as strong as ever. Clearly that is a progression.”

What has happened, then? “There was a conscious effort almost halfway through last year,” Kevin Sorrell, the former club centre and now the attack coach, says.

“We looked at how we could make some slight changes to it : the last nine Premiership matches last season we scored 27 tries.

"Just making the right decision at the right time, that is all we have been trying to do. We have tweaked things along the way and added things.”

There have been some key men in this, notably Billy Vunipola, the No 8, whose arrival from Wasps has given Saracens the sort of go-forward ball of which attack-minded sides dream.

And then there is Owen Farrell, the fly-half. His attacking play, challenging the line and always asking questions of opposing defences, has quite simply been a revelation, both for Saracens and England.

Touring with the British and Irish Lions in Australia last summer obviously had its benefits.

“I think the Lions experience was great for him,” McCall says. “He came back and he had added to his game massively, especially his attacking game. He has been a big part of the tries we have scored this season.”

He is also more mature. “He is less prone to being volatile, not only for us but for England as well,” McCall says.

“His temperament is a huge strength now. He also understands himself. He is unbelievably self-aware of the impact he has on others.”

There is also Chris Ashton, the wing, who has scored more tries - 11 - than anyone in a European season.

Dropped by England, he has been in point-making form for Saracens, thanks in no small part to the extensive work he has done work with Saracens’ skills coach Joe Shaw, the former Newcastle, Sale and Northampton back.

What has been Shaw doing? Like most of the best coaches, Shaw is not going to brag about his work. It has all been down to Ashton, apparently, and his ability now to look more closely at his own game.

“I think everyone knows that Chris has always been a world-class try scorer and if you look at his stats for his whole career from league to union, he has scored one every other game,” Shaw says.

“So it was more about him coming up with where he wants to go, about him being more self-aware of what he is very good at.

“If you look at his performances this year, along with breaking records, his assists and his defence have been phenomenal. In the air he has been consistently very good too.

"It’s just his understanding of the role he has to play at the club, how aware he is of being a team man. I think the extra bits and bobs he has added to his game and the way he has self-analysed himself are paying off.”

This is all very good, but can they reverse that Toulon result from last year and take a first Heineken Cup in Cardiff on Saturday?

Before that Clermont match, McCall had recalled the quarter-final thrashing at the same opponents’ hands two years earlier and vowed that the physical battering would not be repeated.

When it was suggested that something similar had happened against Toulon last year, he positively bristled.

“I wouldn’t accept that,” he said. “When you look back at the game it was a lot closer than it looked.

“We made more mistakes in our half than in any game last season. With Jonny Wilkinson kicking the way he did on that day, you can’t afford to make mistakes in your own half.

“Munster made countless errors in their own half in the semi-final as well [when losing to Toulon this season]. So as a team you have to play in the right areas of the field.”

It is easy forget how short Saracens’ road to potential champions has been. Five years ago they were not in the main competition.

The following year they came bottom of their pool. “I think our South Africans didn’t really understand the competition at that point,” McCall says.

“The last three years we have been in a quarter-final, semi-final and now a final. I think it just takes time.

“You have to put yourselves there or thereabouts. We think we have developed as a squad, and have much more experience in these kind of situations.”

The challenge now for Saracens is to reproduce the astounding intensity of that Clermont match. “We think we understand what brought about that performance,” McCall says. “On the day we have to bring intensity and physicality, but also clarity of thought. When we listened to the referee’s microphone during the Clermont game, the amount of little conversations that were going on around the ball was magnificent as a group for us.

“Our defence into attack transition was brilliant. We were very alive as a team. If we get that kind of life about us against Toulon, we will be hard to beat.”

Everything must come together again. That is the reality. It is a big ask. But, then, it is a big game.